Synthesis of knowledge to support the assessment of impacts of water resource development to ecological assets in northern Australia: asset descriptions

[摘要] Land and water resource developments have the potential to modify rivers, floodplains, estuaries and coastal waters, changing habitats and ecological processes that support native flora and fauna. The Ecology activity of the Northern Australia Water Resource Assessment (the Assessment) will assess the impacts of potential changes in flow on freshwater, estuarine and marine ecosystems due to potential new infrastructure across three focus regions of northern Australia: the Mitchell, Fitzroy and Darwin catchments.The activity has three major themes:1. identification and prioritisation of ecological assets2. asset descriptions, including a conceptual model developed to characterise flow–ecology relationships, the potential impacts of water resource development and other non-flow drivers of change3. analysis of potential impacts using quantitative and qualitative methods.A range of functional groups, species, habitats and ecosystem processes were identified as assets. Species were classified as being of recreational, commercial or conservation value. Twenty-eight assets were selected; 13 were classed as freshwater and the remaining 15 were classed as marine.Each of the 28 assets:• is water dependent, with that dependency being supported from water sourced within catchments. For species and functional groups, part or all of their life cycle is supported; for habitats, their condition is supported; and for ecological processes, part or all of these are supported• is distributed across catchments, and is therefore suitable for representing flow responses of ecosystems within catchments• has a dependency on water that is relatively well understood, such that sufficient knowledge is available to describe their relationships with flow, either conceptually or through more quantitative methods• is representative of the range of flow requirements and responses in diverse and distributed water-dependent ecosystems• has significance, being of conservation, recreational or commercial value.This technical report synthesises the assets within the Assessment study area. The knowledge of these assets underpins the asset analysis technical report. Each asset is accompanied by a description of its significance, its distribution through the Assessment study areas, and an understanding of its relationship to flow. Information that captures other important drivers of change to the asset is also included. The reviews are accompanied by conceptual models and references to publicly available literature.

[发布日期] 2018-06-30 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)